


Like Home

by Edwardina



Category: Glee
Genre: Coda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edwardina/pseuds/Edwardina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>308 coda. Sam moves back to Lima.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Kum Week](http://canoeweek.tumblr.com/) (Day Two, "living together"). It's really just canon, gen character interaction and Hummel house love. Thanks, as always, to Kate!

Sam packed almost everything he owned to take with him to Lima.

It wasn't much. His family was still getting back on their feet. And he left stuff behind on purpose, so Stacy and Stevie wouldn't think he was leaving forever and his mom could still look into the room he was sharing with his little brother and see signs of him there, like his unmade bed and the blue Dairy Queen ball cap he still had regardless of the fact that he didn't work there anymore and hadn't for at least a month. He left his old shoes and holey jeans. He had new ones now. To his surprise, it wouldn't all fit into his duffel bag, so he layered up three t-shirts and two henleys under his jacket and carried his extra pair of sneakers. Finn carried his guitar case and Rachel clung to his arm as they walked through the December sunshine towards the car.

"You're saving our butts," she said fervently.

"What'd you get suspended for, anyway?" Sam asked.

"I tried to help Kurt win the student council election by stuffing the ballot box," admitted Rachel. "I may have overdone it a little."

"Did he win?"

"No. He got busted for my wrong-doing, and Brittany won by default. I mean... she had more votes, anyway. Actual ones."

"That's weird," Sam commented. "I mean, he didn't even run for prom queen and he won that. And Santana and Quinn and Zizes were all in the running. That's a lot of votes. Do you think someone stuffed the ballot box then, too?"

"Maybe – !" started Rachel.

"Come on, that's in the past," Finn said loudly, hauling the lid of his trunk up and cramming Sam's guitar case into it crookedly, on top of a deflated football and a half-empty bottle of soda that looked like it had been in there for a while. "We've got to focus on the task ahead."

As Finn slammed the trunk again, Sam got a glimpse of his parents in the doorway, his dad holding Stacy so she wouldn't run after them, asking to come along. He smiled and almost lifted a hand to wave until he thought better of it. He'd already hugged them all and vowed to come back in two weeks, in time to help his dad hang Christmas lights. If he started up the goodbyes again, his mom would probably start crying.

"You guys have a set list?" he asked, opening the back door and tossing his bag and stuff into the seat next to his before climbing in.

"Making a set list more than a couple of days in advance has never really worked for us," lamented Finn.

"So not that much has changed," Sam said wryly.

"Well," said Rachel, pulling the passenger seat door shut behind her, "besides being down four female voices and left at the mercy of Quinn and Tina's comparatively untrained techniques, meaning we're two scant, breathy vocals away from being an all-male glee club, we've somehow managed to retain our signature on-the-fly approach, yes."

"I really think we stand a chance," insisted Finn. "You've got to think of this like a sport. We're going into the game and morale is low. We need team spirit in order to rally. We need an experienced player to come in, shake things up, break the monotony and make a stellar play, and lift the entire team up with him."

Rachel nodded along fervently and Sam grinned. As deeply humiliating as it had been to get royally busted for taking his clothes off to make a buck, that hadn't changed Finn and Rachel's minds about him, and for the first time in a while, he felt a real, happy ray of hope breaking up the clouds in his mind.

"But it's got to be a shock to everyone's system. We need to keep Sam a surprise as long as possible, then spring him on everyone, show 'em hope isn't lost. Rachel, we can stash Sam at your place tonight, then after school tomorrow, he can come stay at mine."

"The couch in our basement is really comfortable," Rachel assured him. Sam remembered the Berry Oscar Room pretty well, even though it seemed now like most of that evening was just a drunken haze of Santana alternately cursing him out in Spanish, sobbing, and making out with him.

"We can do this!" Finn added.

"Let's do it," Sam whooped, clapping the back of Finn's headrest. "Let's go. Ohio, here I come."

With a grin, Finn started the car, then they were off.

Rachel wasn't wasting time, either. "Okay, so on the way home, Sam, I'm going to play you a selection of songs in Kurt's range and I want you to tell me which really stand out to you. Kurt and Blaine are really going to be hauling a lot of weight so we've got to find things that suit the voices we've got."

"Blaine," repeated Sam. "Is he going to be there?"

"Yeah, he goes to McKinley now. He transferred from Dalton at the beginning of the year to be with Kurt, so of course, he joined The New Directions," replied Rachel. "He also starred opposite me in McKinley's production of _West Side Story_ and was an amazing Tony – although in heels, I was a little taller than him, so I had to keep them pretty modest. Hey, I also have a bootleg recording of our final _West Side Story_ performance on my iPod –"

"Let's just stay focused, here," Finn said. "Sectionals!"

As they reached the end of the street, Sam finally glanced back at his house.

 

*

 

"I missed glee," Sam said. "I really missed it."

"It kinda gets in your blood, doesn't it?" Finn asked fondly.

"I don't think they've ever heard of show choir in Kentucky. The school I was going to only had a marching band. Not even a jazz band. I only ever got to really sing in church and in the car and I only ever danced in tear-away pants. Rachel ran me through warm-ups and, like, vocal exercises for three hours last night. I thought my voice was going to give, but then it just got really stretchy."

"She's done that with me, too." Finn paused by the front door – it was red, Sam noted, but a clean and ruby-red, a knocker shining on it, unlike the sun-faded rusty red of the room he'd lived in at the American Family Motel – then smiled and pushed it open. "Come on in."

Sam followed him in, each shoulder wider than usual with a bag hanging from each, sneakers hanging from his fingers.

"Finn?" a voice wondered from further inside.

"And Sam," Finn called back cheerily.

The voice belonged to Kurt, who had a phone to his ear and greeted them with a series of increasingly disbelieving blinks. Sam smiled awkwardly as the moment stretched on into a weighty silence punctuated by the puzzled voice of whoever he was talking to.

"Yeah... I'll have to call you back," Kurt said, and hung up without saying goodbye.

"Hey, Kurt," Sam said.

"Oh," Finn let out in an abrupt breath, like he'd suddenly remembered something.

"Finn," said Kurt evenly. "Why didn't you tell me we were going to have a house guest."

Finn's mouth tugged in an apologetic way when Sam looked at him, stomach flopping somewhat.

"What is wrong with you. You could have given me a heads-up at school! You could've told me last night! You didn't even give me an hour to prepare! We live together, it's not like it takes more than ten seconds to come knock on my door and tell me 'Hey, air out the guest room!' Seriously, what's going through your head? You wait here, Sam. Just wait. Don't even think about settling in till I get clean sheets on that bed!"

Finn smiled woefully at Sam, who simply stood there in the foyer, staring, watching Kurt somehow dart and stomp up the stairs at the same time.

"You don't have to..." he tried.

"Just let him," advised Finn knowingly.

Sam felt vaguely guilty and didn't know why, seeing as how he was also so over the moon he'd grinned all day long.

"It _is_ okay if I stay here, right?"

"'Course. You can stay as long as you want."

"Well, I'll help Kurt with the sheets, then," Sam decided.

"Seriously, just let him do his thing. It's kind of the way it works around here," said Finn, and jerked his head beckoningly. "You'll get used to it, trust me. C'mon, we can wait in my room."

He carried Sam's guitar up the stairs for him, and Sam followed, dragging his duffel and his backpack up the stairs and trying not to peer around too much like a tourist or something. It was just that Finn and Kurt's house was really nice. He'd gotten used to living in cheap motels and then his family's new tiny starter house with its equally cheap faux wood cabinetry, bunking with Stevie and waking up with a grime of glitter on his bedsheets. The stairs under his feet felt solid; the neutral paint job on the walls was recent, clean; windows with sheer, cream-colored curtains let in sunlight that made the shiny wood banister gleam.

"So, we pretty much have the run of the second floor," said Finn over his shoulder. "Kurt's down there at the left end, and I'm right here, bathroom's on the far right. We share it, but you have to remember to put the toilet seat down or Kurt gets really pissed 'cause, I dunno, it's bad manners or something. So, you're in the guest room, and the guest room's actually between my room and Kurt's room, so you'll probably hear a lot of weird stuff."

"Weird how?" asked Sam warily.

"Uh, I dunno, like... Dionne Warwick and a sewing machine going at two in the morning, or, uh, well, I play the drums in my room. I can't play after ten P.M., but, you know. Violent video game gunfire. Kurt singing or Skyping with Blaine... the guest room usually acts kind of like a sound barrier or something and blocks us from bothering each other too much, but... you'll probably hear us both."

"That's cool. I got really used to hearing other people at the motel. I'm just happy to be here, honestly," said Sam.

"We're happy to have you back, dude!"

From mid-landing, Sam saw Kurt hustle by with his arms full of what he assumed were fresh sheets, muttering.

"You get used to it," Finn repeated. "Here's my room, c'mon."

Finn's room was obviously the smallest of the three, but Finn didn't seem like he minded at all. He had a twin-sized bed that Sam imagined his feet hanging over every night; his drum kit took up the majority of the room. There was a little old TV and an ancient, clearly loved Playstation placed next to a much newer, nicer Playstation 3. The bed wasn't made, red and blue plaid sheets in a lazily wide print hanging off one side.

He had a hamper full of dirty laundry and a hamper full of clean laundry, the latter of which was piled with neatly-folded clothes that seemed to be organized by color. Sam took a wild guess that he lived between them rather than actually put anything in his closet or dresser. There was a football lamp by the bed and a pink-framed picture of Rachel with her winningest, weirdest smile on her face, surrounded by shiny gold star stickers.

Finn scooped a pile of textbooks and spiral notebooks from a worn-looking brown leather chair.

"Here, take a seat. Sorry there's not really room for a trundle in here, but anytime you want to play some _Madden_..."

"Awesome," said Sam. He was trying not let himself get even vaguely twingey with jealousy over everything Finn had; he did, honestly, feel happy to be there and lucky to have what he did – his guitar and his clothes and more than one pair of shoes.

"Ditch your stuff! I need to play with someone who doesn't suck."

They put in the game and Sam spent an amazing hour or so sucking spectacularly (which Finn seemed to think was pretty funny, despite what he'd said about needing a skilled opponent) because it had been so flipping long since he'd played a video game before Kurt appeared in the doorway.

"Sorry about the wait," he said, seeming calmer. "It's all ready for you, Sam. Let me help you unpack."

"There's not much," said Sam, abandoning his controller so he could gather up his stuff again. Finn promptly took Sam's quarterback down, inducing the digital crowd to a noise of dissent.

"Oh, well, I can get this, anyway," said Kurt, picking up his guitar case with such weird posture that it made Sam realize he'd probably never held a guitar case before, or maybe even a guitar.

"Thanks," Sam said, slightly amused.

"Finn, I'm mad at you," Kurt said flatly, and lead Sam out of the room.

"I wanted it to be a surprise!" Finn called.

"Sorry, I didn't want to put you out or anything," Sam said once they were out in the hall, _Madden_ commentating still clearly audible. "I'm fine with the couch."

"Right, we're going to make you sleep on the couch," Kurt scoffed, making it sound like Sam had said _gutter_ and not _couch_. 

He pushed open the door to the guest room and Sam's heart abruptly buoyed up high in his chest.

Behind the door was a room that definitely didn't look lived in, but like everything else in the house, it was nice, clean, and seemed airy, and for a moment, he was kind of overwhelmed at the idea of actually getting to sleep in it and not share it with anyone.

There was a full-sized bed that had just been turned down like the beds in their hotel in New York had been. It sheets were crisp white and, Sam had to assume, clean – or up to Kurt's standard, anyway. A blue and yellow patchwork quilt, something Sam's mom would love, covered the sheets. It didn't match anything else in the entire room. There was a trunk at the end of the bed and a chest of drawers directly across from the window, under which was a slim bookcase that looked like something from Ikea, all white and modern. Lots of random books were jammed in its shelves. At the head of the bed, the wall was papered with black and white toile. The wall looked inordinately fancy against the patchwork quilt. The curtains were black, and everything else bright white. One corner housed a rocking chair, the cushion in its seat also that clean white and black toile.

It was somehow all very Kurt, with its clean lines and relative elegance and everything, except for the way it also seemed to be a jumble of random furniture.

It wasn't like Sam was judging, though. This was one cylinder-shaped pillow away from being the Four Seasons. He bent at the waist and dropped his Nikes next to the door.

Somehow bustling, Kurt leaned Sam's guitar case carefully against the wall in the tiny corner created by the bookcase, and then turned to him, hands clasped together.

"Well! I hope it's comfortable. Pardon the coverlet. It doesn't exactly tie the room together, I know. I've been torn about comforters for a while. To toile or not the toile, you know? How many pastoral scenes should there be in one room? Can toile clash with itself? Why did I watch all those episodes of _Divine Design_?"

"I've never seen toile on a wall." Sam hauled his duffel bag onto the bed, which squeaked pleasantly.

"You've never seen an all-toile wall?" Kurt joked. "Eh, I'm kind of rethinking the toile now. It's not really very 'you,' is it? If it bothers you, we can strip it off in a day, no problem."

"Don't change anything," Sam said quickly. "I don't know how long I'll be here. If we lose at Sectionals, I might get sent packing, right?"

It was a thought that had not exactly occurred to Sam until the words were already out of his mouth. Sectionals had gone pretty well last year, and he'd been carrying a lot of weight, with a duet and everything. After Regionals and Nationals, he was aware of just how big a deal it was to be featured at a competition – just how much actually rode on the shoulders of someone walking out into the spotlight on their own. What if they bombed, like they had at Nationals? Mercedes wasn't even in the glee club anymore, plus she had some hot-shot boyfriend. It became instantly difficult to imagine asking his parents if he could stay if the team he'd returned for simply got knocked out of the running.

"Hm! Well, okay. But you let me know if those peasants give you nightmares."

"Sure, yeah," murmured Sam.

"Sooo..." Kurt said in a drawn-out fashion. "Sam... I have kind of a weird favor to ask you. Well, it's not so much a favor as a demand."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry we don't have a closet for you. This is kind of the room where a bunch of displaced stuff wound up when Finn and Carole joined the household, so the closet houses things like Carole's wedding dresses. I'm going to work on finding you a good storage system. That is, it you intend to hang around for a while. But don't use the dresser in here, okay? Or the trunk. The trunk's locked, but still, just in case you're an expert lock-pick or something, please refrain. It's off-limits. As is the dresser."

"Okay," repeated Sam, unruffled.

"I'll pick you up something at Sheets-N-Things," said Kurt, his fingers clinging together anxiously. "I would've had a shelf or some hooks ready for you if my idiot stepbrother had told me you were going to be here."

Sam eased his backpack off his shoulders. "It's no big deal."

"Some of us like to be prepared," Kurt said, eyes rolling to the heavens.

"So the dresser and trunk, are they full of stuff?" Sam guessed.

"The trunk, yes. And a couple of the dresser drawers have things in them. Mostly boring old stuff. Photo albums, some papers, old clothes. Just some things that belonged to my mom."

There was a pause; Sam didn't know a whole lot about Kurt's family, other than his dad had married Finn's mom and the glee club had all been in the wedding party. But just from the way Kurt said the words _my mom_ , he picked up some kind of uneasiness. It took Sam a moment to dredge up memories from the wedding ceremony; he remembered something about Kurt losing his mom, but he came up blank about whether it had been said when or how. He hadn't asked anyone at the time. He'd still kind of been the new kid who couldn't remember dance steps. The blissful shock of cannon-balling right back into glee, right back into the wedding party with all the people who had become his best friends, surged up inside him.

"Don't worry," he said briefly, trying to sound reassuring. "I won't go poking through her stuff. I lived out of this bag for most of the year, so I'm pretty used to it. And I didn't really bring that much."

Kurt hesitated, then pushed, "Please... if you can remember, don't even open the drawers. The clothes and stuff in there... they still smell like her. Just a little. Not just her perfume, but her. The smell has kind of faded over the years, but every now and then, when I just... forget, I like to remember by cracking a drawer open. My dad wanted to just give away this dresser when we moved here, but I begged him not to. Not yet, you know? I know he's got his whole new life with Carole and congress... and I know the smell is going to go away eventually, totally. As it is, I'm just clinging to what's left."

"But that's your mom," Sam said. "It's important not to lose your memories of her."

Kurt, whose arms had crossed over his chest, looked at Sam as if surprised.

"I promise. I won't open the drawers," added Sam, offering him a smile.

Kurt blinked, letting out a breath that made his puffed up chest and tense shoulders come loose.

"I promise," Sam repeated.

"Thank you," said Kurt.

 

*

 

Being a guest in other people's houses wasn't something Sam was an expert at, although he was pretty good at being away from home – home as in his family's own house, home as in his parents and brother and sister. He had gone to boarding school before his family had moved to Lima.

Spending the night at Rachel's house had been like being at a dinner party or something, kind of surreal, her dads not sure what to make of him but very solicitous and talkative anyway. They'd made up virgin cocktails (kind of weird) and played the piano and sang together (kind of weird, but kind of nice) and asked him if he liked show tunes, rap music, and "that little rascal of an imp, Justin Bieber," who was dating "that Selena Gomez girl." They wondered if Sam was going to cut his hair, too. They reminisced about someone named Annette. After dinner, they listened to him do some scales with Rachel and nodded thoughtfully before leaving them alone to whip Sam's voice back into shape. By the time Rachel escorted him down to the basement, the couch had been made up for him and Rachel bid him good night. He had wondered if he was allowed to leave the basement or if Mr. and Mr. Berry would think he was trying to sneak into Rachel's room or something. The house had been really quiet all night. Maybe it was the cocktails, but homesickness dawned.

Dinner at the Hummels' was grilled cheese, which Finn made, and tomato basil soup, which Kurt made. It was homey. They all leaned against kitchen counters and sipped soup out of mugs, and Sam was mercifully left unquestioned because the TV was on. Kurt amicably flipped between a re-run of _America's Funniest Home Videos_ , _E! News_ , and _SpongeBob Squarepants_. It seemed like something Finn and Kurt were used to doing when their parents weren't there. It was dark out early, and the neighbors already had white icicle Christmas lights up.

After dinner, Kurt went to call Blaine back, Finn sighed and said, "Guess I should do my homework," and Sam went upstairs to unpack a little.

On the way, he noticed that the upstairs wall had a tidy clutter of pictures on it and slowed to give them a curious look. There were school pictures, the kind with those ubiquitous cloudy blue backgrounds, all collected into a frame that had several rows. Some of the kids in the pictures had shaggy, sandy hair and some had Cub Scout uniforms on. It took him a moment to realize they were all of Finn and Kurt. Well, Kurt was really obvious – round-faced and pale in each picture, almost always in a tie or bow tie, shoulders straight, eyes borderline manic. Finn was the wild card who always looked like he was only halfway into a smile by the time the picture was taken.

Sam almost laughed.

There was a Polaroid picture of Carole with a guy in fatigues, looking different, with frosty blue eye shadow; a picture of Burt in front of his tire shop, looking almost the exact same.

There were wedding pictures, a whole bunch of them. Sam remembered the church, with its green carpeting, the red dresses the girls had worn. To his surprise, he found himself in several of the pictures, leaning in and posing with everyone, hair longer and still badly damaged from his wack home dye-job, a red ring clearly visible around his eye.

There were pictures of him. Pictures of him hanging on the wall in the Hummel house, like he meant something to the people who lived here. He wasn't cropped out. He was smiling.

He was surrounded by stuff that wasn't his, but Kurt's family's... trusted to be around locked-away things that were precious, smells and memories... given a bed of his own. Kurt wanted to get him a shelf.

After a minute he realized he could hear Kurt's voice in his room as he stood there in the hall. It was totally muffled and indistinct, but the clear tone of it still managed to be heard through the door. He listened, not trying to hear what Kurt was saying, but rather listening to the sound. He caught a laugh every now and then and stared up at the kid wearing bow ties in all his school pictures. He'd had freckles when he was little. To the far left, there was a picture of a chubby-cheeked, chubby-legged toddler standing proudly in a pair of high heels, wearing sunglasses. At the far right, a picture from prom, Kurt's knee bent in his kilt, crown on his head and scepter in hand.

Sam was still standing in the hallway, investigating the pictures and coming back to his own face in the displayed timeline of Kurt's life, when Kurt suddenly opened his bedroom door and stopped short just seeing Sam there.

"Cute kid," said Sam, tilting his head towards the heels-and-sunglasses picture.

"Oh, God," responded Kurt, sliding over to join him, hands finding his pockets. "Well, even early-on I was very experimental, fashion-wise."

"The ducky shorts are totally Lady Gaga," Sam teased.

"Yeah, she stole them from me. I can't believe they fit her. Man, I was a fat baby."

"So was I. Babies are supposed to be kinda fat and roly-poly. That's what makes them cute. I don't know what _this_ guy's excuse is." Sam tapped a wedding picture, where he was smiling like a goon, his eye swollen. His bleached hair made him stick out from the party, even next to Quinn and Brittany.

Kurt elbowed him. " _Please_. Look how young he is! He'll get his act together and go a little more natural. Shrink a little, maybe?"

"No, you've just grown."

"I have!"

"Yeah, like an inch!"

"Well, I dunno. Living with Finn... I think the tallness is contagious or something."

"Oh, cool. I'm trying to reach six-two."

Kurt smiled.

"It's nice to have you here, Sam. I'm... glad you're okay. Your family, you know. That you found a place to live. You seem good."

"Thanks," Sam said, mouth dry. "I'm doing okay."

"And I know you're going to be a huge help at Sectionals. I think we might stand an actual chance now."

"We are gonna win this," Sam said.

"I think we just might."


End file.
